Political writer Mick Dumke, who left the Reader for the Chicago News Cooperative last July, will return to the Reader next month as a senior writer. His appointment was announced Tuesday evening by the Reader‘s new editor, Mara Shalhoup.
“I miss the extra real estate and space flexibility there,” Dumke told me. A frequent political blogger at the Reader, Dumke also specialized in analytical cover stories — on the city’s gun control law, for instance, on the city’s shadow budget (written with frequent collaborator Ben Joravsky), and on Mayor Daley’s political prospects.
Then there was the time Daley was talking gun control and he hefted a confiscated rifle with a long bayonet at a news conference and mused briefly about its effectiveness if shoved up Dumke’s — . That brought him the kind of overnight celebrity that no mere news article, no matter how well crafted, possibly — can.
Dumke’s many Reader friends hated to see him go eight months ago. His return, scheduled for April 13, is being welcomed as a tonic.